Cartoon of the Day: Book's Book Club

KAREN PIRIE, Season 3, NEWS

For those of you wondering about and hoping for a new Karen Pirie season..well, there's good news! The TV series Karen Pirie, based on the Val McDermid books, will have a third season. Filming isn't planned until early 2027, so it will be awhile. Season 3 will have 6 hour long episodes, adapted from The Skeleton Road. 

Lauren Lyle returns as Scottish Detective Sergeant Karen Pirie. Lyle will also be an Executive Producer for the new season. Season scripts adapted by Gillian Roger Park.

Season 3 follows Karen as she investigates human remains discovered in a derelict Edinburgh building, uncovering dangerous secrets linked to the Balkan conflict of the 1990s, a famous author and a cycle of revenge.

Cartoon of the Day: Cats

From Rhymes with Orange. Happy Caturday!

Cartoon of the Day: Books

 

Everybody Lies: French TV series on PBS PASSPORT

I'm really enjoying the French TV series Everybody Lies (Tout le mode ment). The show stars Vincent Elbaz as Vincent Verner, an incorruptible former Paris detective. He was dismissed from the police force, and he takes a job working in a bookshop. Well, maybe 'working' is too strong a word. He was not hired (so can't be fired), and he doesn't get paid. However, he spends a lot of time reshelving the crime novels in an order that makes sense to him. I won't tell you in what way, but it really is quite brilliant (but not easy for the casual book browser), and a system that mystery folks will enjoy. 

This bookshop becomes a secret 'headquarters' for a newly formed department..the Sensitive Cases Unit. The cases they investigate usually operate outside standard police protocol. No surprise there. The suspects ae usually powerful public figures.The cases are interesting and their investigation is well-done. Vincent Verner is quirky, but I love a quirky detective. 

The show is full of mystery tropes, but that's fine with me. It's an easy show to watch, and sometimes that's what I want. 

Everybody Lies is available on PBS Passport and Amazon Prime Video (as add-on subscription to Walter Presents). The series is in French with English subtitles. There are 8 episodes (4 feature-length stories). 

Although, there's a second season,  it's not available in the U.S. yet. But there's hope!

MACAVITY AWARD WINNERS 2026

Macavity Awards 2026
(for works published in 2025)

The Macavity Awards are nominated and voted on by members of Mystery Readers International, subscribers to Mystery Readers Journal, and friends of MRI. Congratulations to all!

The Macavity Award is named after Macavity: The Mystery Cat, in T.S. Eliot's Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats! Scroll down to read the poem. 

Want to be a member/subscriber, go here. Mystery Readers Journal themes for 2026: Fairs, Fetes, and Festivals; Mysteries set in France; Cross-Genre Mysteries; and Mysteries set in India. 

Macavity Winners 2026 (for works published in 2025)

Best Mystery Novel

*Crooks by Lou Berney (William Morrow)

Also nominated:

King of Ashes by S.A. Cosby (Flatiron Books)

Clown Town by Mick Herron (Soho Crime)

River of Lies by James L'Etoile (Oceanview Publishing)

The White Crow by Michael Robotham (Scribner)

All This Could Be Yours by Hank Phillippi Ryan (Minotaur Books)

Best First Mystery 

*History Lessons by Zoe B. Wallbrook (Soho Press)

Also nominated:

Savvy Summers and the Sweet Potato Crimes by Sandra Jackson-Opoku (Minotaur Books)

Dead Money by Jakob Kerr (Bantam Books)

Voices of the Elysian Fields by Michael Rigg (Level Best Books)

Stillwater by Tanya Scott (Grove Atlantic)

Best Mystery Nonfiction

*Vacations Can Be Murder: A True Crime Lover's Travel Guide to New England by Dawn M. Barclay (Level Best Books)

Also nominated:

Blood and the Badge: The Mafia, Two Killer Cops, and a Scandal That Shocked the Nation by Michael Cannell (Minotaur Books)

Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers by Caroline Fraser (Penguin Press)

V Is for Venom: Agatha Christie's Chemicals of Death by Kathryn Harkup (Bloomsbury Sigma)

Edgar Allan Poe: A Life by Richard Kopley (University of Virginia Press)

Cooler than Cool: The Life and Work of Elmore Leonard by C.M. Kushins (Mariner Books)

Best Mystery Short Story

*“Six-Armed Robbery” by Ashley-Ruth M. Bernier (in Donna Andrews Presents Malice Domestic: Mystery Most Humorous, edited by John Betancourt, Carla Coupe, and Michael Bracken, Wildside Press)

Also nominated:

“Hollywood Prometheus” by Christa Faust (in Crime Ink: Iconic: An Anthology of Crime Fiction Inspired by Queer Icons, edited by John Copenhaver and Salem West, Bywater Books)

“Finding Jimmy Baldwin” by Cheryl Head (in Crime Ink: Iconic: An Anthology of Crime Fiction Inspired by Queer Icons, edited by John Copenhaver and Salem West, Bywater Books)

“The Devil Himself” by Vaseem Khan (in Double Crossing Van Dine, edited by Donna Andrews, Greg Herren, and Art Taylor, Crippen & Landru Publishers)

“The Skies Are Red” by Richie Narvaez (in On Fire and Under Water: A Climate Change Crime Fiction Anthology, edited by Curtis Ippolito, Rock and a Hard Place Press)

“Julius Katz Draws a Straight Flush” by Dave Zeltserman (Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine, Sept/Oct 2025)

Sue Feder Memorial Historical Mystery

*Bye Bye Blackbird by Elizabeth Crowens (Level Best Books)

Also nominated:

A Daughter's Guide to Mothers and Murder by Dianne Freeman (Kensington Books)

City Lights by Claire M. Johnson (Level Best Books)

The Case of the Christie Conspiracy by Kelly Oliver (Boldwood Books)

The Case of the Missing Maid by Rob Osler (Kensington Books)

No. 10 Doyers Street by Radha Vatsal (Level Best Books)

***

Macavity: The Mystery Cat by T.S. Eliot

Macavity’s a Mystery Cat: he’s called the Hidden Paw—
For he’s the master criminal who can defy the Law.
He’s the bafflement of Scotland Yard, the Flying Squad’s despair:
For when they reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
He’s broken every human law, he breaks the law of gravity.
His powers of levitation would make a fakir stare,
And when you reach the scene of crime—Macavity’s not there!
You may seek him in the basement, you may look up in the air—
But I tell you once and once again, Macavity’s not there!

Macavity’s a ginger cat, he’s very tall and thin;
You would know him if you saw him, for his eyes are sunken in.
His brow is deeply lined with thought, his head is highly domed;
His coat is dusty from neglect, his whiskers are uncombed.
He sways his head from side to side, with movements like a snake;
And when you think he’s half asleep, he’s always wide awake.

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
For he’s a fiend in feline shape, a monster of depravity.
You may meet him in a by-street, you may see him in the square—
But when a crime’s discovered, then Macavity’s not there!

He’s outwardly respectable. (They say he cheats at cards.)
And his footprints are not found in any file of Scotland Yard’s.
And when the larder’s looted, or the jewel-case is rifled,
Or when the milk is missing, or another Peke’s been stifled,
Or the greenhouse glass is broken, and the trellis past repair—
Ay, there’s the wonder of the thing! Macavity’s not there!

And when the Foreign Office find a Treaty’s gone astray,
Or the Admiralty lose some plans and drawings by the way,
There may be a scrap of paper in the hall or on the stair—
But it’s useless to investigate—Macavity’s not there!
And when the loss has been disclosed, the Secret Service say:
‘It must have been Macavity!’—but he’s a mile away.
You’ll be sure to find him resting, or a-licking of his thumbs;
Or engaged in doing complicated long division sums.

Macavity, Macavity, there’s no one like Macavity,
There never was a Cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place—MACAVITY WASN’T THERE!
And they say that all the Cats whose wicked deeds are widely known
(I might mention Mungojerrie, I might mention Griddlebone)
Are nothing more than agents for the Cat who all the time
Just controls their operations: the Napoleon of Crime!